Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC net-next] net: Allow name change of IFF_UP interfaces

From: Vitaly Kuznetsov <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 18:33:51 +0200

Andrew Lunn <[email-masked]> writes:

> On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 05:24:55PM +0200, Vitaly Kuznetsov wrote:
>> Andrew Lunn <[email-masked]> writes:
>> 
>> >> We are - rtnetlink_event() does the job. We, however, don't have a
>> >> special IFLA_EVENT_* for name change and end up with IFLA_EVENT_NONE.
>> >
>> > What is in this event? Old and new name? Just the new name?
>> 
>> Basically, it's everything we know about the interface - type, index,
>> name, mtu, qdisc, ... - see rtnl_fill_ifinfo(). Back to your question -
>> it's only the new name.
>
> So the program needs to keep track of ifindex to know which interface
> has changed name. Doable.
>

Yes, and I'd expect that's what these daemons do nowdays to track name
changes for down interfaces (if/when they care).

> I still expect this has the potential to break something. You probably
> should be asking on linux-api for the API experts opinion.
>

Good idea, I'll do RFCv2 submission.

-- 
  Vitaly